Paris, a café in the 8th arrondissement, l’avenue Haussmann, it’s the one with all the Prada Gucci Celine Chanel. The one Plaza Athénée is on. That high-end hotel with red flower-covered facades. If you haven’t seen it yourself you may still know it from your Instagram feed of traveling Jetset girls. Women wearing white towel turbans posing on red-flowered balconies next to lavishly set breakfast tables. They always wear towel turbans and they are always posing next to breakfast tables. Whoever started it good on you for setting a trend, I salute you, but I want it to stop.
Anyway that’s Plaza Athénée and that’s where I’m staying or I should say did stay because I just checked out but am not ready to leave yet so I’m at a corner café slash restaurant nearby.
Trip Advisor says it’s good for people watching. I am a tourist even if I try hard to pretend otherwise but I am a tourist so I stop on sidewalks blocking the way with my suitcase and with myself staring at my phone to skim reviews. Yes, I am that girl.
I really want an iced latte. It’s an upscale place and I feel self-conscious and a little embarrassed for just ordering an iced latte when everybody else is having bottles of expensive wine or lobster lunches but I just ate and I don’t want to drink a bottle of wine now. I really do want that iced latte. Also, I want to practice not being dumb and not getting seduced by the honey-trap that is fitting in so I go for it and ask the waitress if it’s okay to just order an iced latte and of course it is okay. I think too much.
The man at the table next to mine is FaceTiming a friend colleague business partner. Loud French I don’t understand which is okay maybe. His shirt sleeves are rolled up which I love on men, I find it incredibly sexy because it says I’m classy but also I don’t give a fuck. In his case I don’t know what it says, maybe only I don’t give a fuck. He drinks white wine, didn’t go for the iced latte I guess, his elbow resting on the table while the other hand moves with his words. He takes up space, lots of it, like it’s his birthright which it probably is.
When I get back from the bathroom the waitress is just about to serve my order. I let her lead the way and follow close behind. As we pass the man his hand reaches out and for a split second I think he’s going to grope her and my body screams it’s happening again, run! no - protect! but then I see he is slipping a bundle of green hundreds into her hand instead. No comment no looking up at her no words, except the business talk on his unmuted video call.
She grabs the bills, intuitively, like how could you not, and she and I arrive at my table. She looks at me, eyes widened, beaming, adrenaline rushing, then breathes out, like wtf. She’s 20, 22 tops. Freckled skin, cutest face, no make-up needed when wearing youth, too carefree or too smart to put it on nevertheless. “Nice!!!” I say, almost yell, and give her a big smile. She smiles back, sisters in crime, aren’t we all, then quickly regains composure and asks if I need sugar for my coffee, which I do.
I watch her as she walks off passing the man’s table. She’s different now. Changed energy. Changed body language. She smiles at him, no polite waitress smile, the other kind. No prey but predator. Something has shifted, been switched on.
Long flowing summer dress she doesn’t walk she glides struts performs and I suddenly think words I wouldn't be caught dead using. Descriptors I read in bad erotic writing that make me cringe. Supple, voluptuous, trembling bosom; ample bottom, dripping with estrogen.
When did I become a horny old man?
Sometimes I wonder if my gaze is my gaze or the male gaze that I had to absorb for so long that it has eventually morphed into my own.
For now, that’s not important though, she is. She is beautiful and young and powerful, oh so powerful, and she now knows it and I fucking love that for her!
Good for her, and I too, find myself rooting for her.
I laughed so hard at the advent coming, or rather the metamorphosis of the male gaze, after observing it for so long.
Can young men such as I, find themselves in the same predicament? Of becoming a horny old woman that is?! Perhaps, or quite possibly within the realm of possibility. Especially, when one has a 81 year old Dutch Godmother, that was a hippie in 1968, and is never worried about speaking her mind.
For some reason, after reading the above for four consecutive times. I’m reminded of Nietzsche. He said “He who has a why to live for, can bear almost any how.” That “why” can be almost anything, at least in my humble opinion of course. Which makes the complexity and diversity of the “how” irrelevant, as the “why” can standup to anything the “how” throws at it.
The young waitress found herself in those shoes I guess. At that very moment, that empowerment through self awareness and realization, came floating down the heavens, like a revelation in the form of a sudden epiphany.
Well done on capturing it all with your keen observing eye, and I thank you, for conveying it so thoughtfully, through the written word.